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Wingship
The Wingship would ultimately be a large form of Ekranoplane; an unusual class of aircraft that uses surface effect lift to support flight at a very low altitude. Though relatively efficient, conventional aerodynamic flight requires an aircraft to spend considerable energy in maintaining aerodynamic lift. Thus contemporary airliners seek relatively high altitudes where a reduction in air pressure increases aerodynamic efficiency relative to air resistance and jet engines generally operate more efficiently. But with the realization of the principles of surface effect lift –where a pressure differential between the top and underside of a structure is created by surface confinement of an air flow– some engineers realized that a higher potential energy efficiency was possible for vehicles that could exploit this alternative mode of lift, which came to be known as the Wing-In-Ground Effect or WIG –after the experience of pilots whose planes sometime resist landing as they approach a runway surface. Thus, as a branch of development off that of the hovercraft we are all commonly familiar with, there was devised a long yet obscure lineage of mostly experimental marine launched aircraft with short broad wings that could literally surf on the pressure wave created under them, ‘flying’ just meters off the surface and gaining great energy efficiency as a result –though maximum efficiency by this method has always favored vehicles of vast size. Soviet engineers in the mid 20th century advanced this technology the most, devising vehicles of great size culminating in the creation of the 540 ton 106 meter long KM, which came to be known by US military intelligence as the Caspian Sea Monster.' It was an experimental vehicle intended for the role of a naval fast attack and landing ship which could travel at airliner speeds and was of such huge scale it could host numerous heavy deck guns and large missile batteries while delivering huge cargos of troops and armament to shore.' The KM was sadly destroyed in 1980 and few of the vehicles developed by the Soviet program survived the transition to the post-Soviet era late in the century. Though their work was initially highly secret, many of the engineers in the Soviet ekranoplane program went on in the late 20th century to propose and design a vast menagerie of commercial vehicles based on this technology including cruise-ship scale liners that could speedily hop the ocean between continents. Unfortunately, the technology has been very slow to develop for a number of reasons. A key technical problem which has always plagued the ekranoplane is the very high energy needed at initial launch of the aircraft due to the excessive drag of water –a problem also common to sea planes but which they overcome easily because the power they need for flight is so much greater to begin with but which for the ekranoplane represents many times greater power than the vehicle would normally need in flight. Thus many ekranoplanes have featured a two-stage propulsion system where an array of engines assist take-off while being shut-down and becoming dead-weight for the rest of a flight, hampering efficiency at small vehicle scales. Relating to this is that jet engines have often been used for this take-off mode and have been placed close to the water, making them prone to frequent failure due to water exposure. Another problem with the ekranoplane has been the need to utilize titanic vehicle scales to approach their maximum efficiency, which makes them difficult to demonstrate commercially because of large speculative investment. Smaller demonstration vehicles prove the flight principles but cannot truly prove the efficiency benefits of the technology. The starting scale for superior efficiency is large commercial airliner scale. Only the Soviets have ever built vehicles of such size. But perhaps the greatest obstacle for the ekranoplane has been simple difference. The ekranoplane exists in a mode of operation between a sea and air vessel and has never been embraced by either transportation industry. Similarly, despite their great lead in this technology, the Soviet military was never able to realize any of its strategic military potential because neither airforce or navy would take responsibility for its use. Today we should understand enough about the technology of transportation in general to recognize the ekranoplane simply as a ‘fast ship’ class of marine vessel akin to hydroplanes and hovercraft. And yet the ‘image problem’ for the technology persists and only a single vehicle has, to date, come close commercial deployment; the Orlyonok, a turbo-prop driven design originating in the Soviet program as a fast troop carrier which was adopted in the post-Soviet era by the Volga Ship Yards for use as a commercial vehicle. Current status of the Orylonok is not clear but this may prove an off-the-shelf starting point for the Wingship development program. Ekranoplane technology presents a certain set of trade-offs but would still be attractive as a solution to Aquarius’ long distance transportation needs. The cost of airstrip construction based on PSPs is high and increases with the scale of aircraft one needs to support. Sea planes would seem the logical solution but, in fact, there are currently no sea planes in existence that can take-off from the open sea. The type of sea conditions sea planes can tolerate is a simple function of scale, as their flotation surfaces must present greater length and height than the average wave lengths and heights in order to offer a smooth enough take-off. Thus it takes a very large sea plane in relatively calm conditions to take off on the open sea. We lost all sea planes of that scale after WWII to the expansion of jet airliners. Simply because of their size, ekranoplanes would fill in this gap in capability, offering aircraft-speed transit while at the same time affording intercontinental ranges and vast cargo capacity based on the higher efficiency of this mode of flight. The likely form of the Aquarian wingship would be that of a very simple lifting-body structure –perhaps as simple as a very large rectangular airfoil or a ‘ray-like’ shape reminiscent of sting rays or manta rays. It would employ the unique approach of a space frame superstructure rather than conventional monocoque aircraft construction, affording it easier construction in an open-air environment and possibly a strength-to-weight benefit at large sizes. Like other Aquarian vessels, it would be designed for multi-use, featuring a large internal bay suited to small ISO containers, RoRo access using large side or front access ramps, and adapted on demand for different combinations of passenger and cargo support. Propulsion of the Wingship could be based on jet or turboprop engines top-mounted on the lifting body. The Wingship would also have the option to exploit its large scale as a means to employ renewable energy in the form of hydrogen, methanol, or possibly electricity used to power thermal-driven engines. To overcome its high take-off energy demand the Wingship may employ a radical approach; LOX rocket propulsion. Rocket engines have a potentially much lower mass-to-power ratio than jet engines and, since they have no air intake, are immune to marine conditions –hence the long history of marine-launched rockets. Military aircraft have long used disposable solid fuel rocket boosters to support the take-off of various large or over-weighted aircraft or the use of short runways. With relatively small light rocket engines and a reserve of cryogenic fuel just large enough to support the short term of take-off, the Wingship would be able to eliminate much of the dead-weight of large jet engine arrays. A small on-board hydrolizer and cryo-cooler would refuel these rockets between flights in locations not equipped to service these vehicles –possibly over a period of a day or two which would not be too much of an inconvenience for vehicles which operate more like ships than planes and could normally experience days between flights. For a vessel already employing liquid hydrogen fuel, this would be an even lesser issue, the liquid hydrogen being used to liquefy air as an oxidizer. Certainly, LOX is volatile but a relatively small volume of fuel would be used and would be completely consumed in take-off, thus presenting much less risks than one might have with a large rocket vehicle. This technology would also offer a useful engineering introduction to rocket propulsion, aiding future spacecraft development among the communities of TMP. Because of the scale of the Wingship, it is likely to be a development of late phases of marine colony development –possibly having to wait until Equatorial settlement is well established. This would be a very sophisticated vehicle to engineer and develop and would require a significant infrastructure among TMP and Foundation facilities to realize. But if successful it could obsolesce the EcoCruiser and possibly supersede the Aquarian Airship in transit importance. Peer Topics *Solar Ferry *Solar Wingsail Cruiser *EcoCruiser *Relay Archipelago *EcoJet *Aquarian Airship *Aquarian Personal Rapid Transit System *Aquarian Personal Packet Transit and SuperStore *Aquarian SE Downstation *Circum-Equatorial Transit Network Parent Topic *Aquarian Transportation Phases Category:Transportation